Archives for January 2017

During my daily 30 minute infrared sauna sessions I’m constantly amazed at how much I sweat. Literally, each and every time I’m astounded like it was my very first session. You are literally pouring sweat from every pore of your body at an incredible rate. Here’s how I know, by the time I have wiped my thumb off on my towel to the time I try to use my iPhone, there is already too much sweat on every pore of my thumb to use it (make sure you have extra towels laying around!)

With all of this sweat, your body needs to replenish itself with gallons of fresh water. And drink water you will! When I’m taking a sauna session everyday I am constantly drinking water and tea all day long. I feel so much better, energized and focused as a result!

Drinking a lot of water has incredible health benefits. You’ll speed up your metabolism, boost your immune system, improve digestion, absorption and transportation of nutrients, increase circulation, boost the creation of saliva and the maintenance of body temperature. Studies have shown that when people drink water before a meal, they lose weight faster than those who didn’t drink water. Extra water helps suppress your appetite and eat less by making you feel full, and it may also boost metabolism.

Drinking water also makes us feel refreshed and actually improves our mood. Mild dehydration has been shown to negatively impact your mood, so instead of drinking coffee, drink tea and instead of drinking soda, drink sparkling or seltzer water (my favorite). By taking a sauna everyday and you’ll feel 100 percent better and you will feel healthy (a very underrated feeling).

Question: The follow up question to yesterday’s blog post ‘Are You Microwaving Yourself in an Infrared Sauna?’ would be why does infrared light heat things better than visible light? Meaning, you can cook meat with an infrared oven but meat won’t just cook on its own outside in normal light. Is this similar to how microwaves heat things?

Follow Up Answer: Yes, you theoretically can cook meat with visible light. However, visible light has several drawbacks.

First, you’ve got to keep in mind that infrared ovens operate at ~3,000-4,000 watts. For comparison, your normal, everyday kitchen light bulb operates at 30-100 watts. In order to achieve the power of an infrared oven with visible light, it would have to be so incredibly bright to the point of being dangerous to everyone around it.

Second, I mentioned in my post ‘Does heat emit infrared photons or are infrared photons what give things heat?’ that three processes are possible when photons hit matter: transmission, absorption and reflection. The reason why we can see each objects with visible light is because each object reflects a good portion of visible light instead of absorbing it. For example, the reason you can see a red apple is because the apple absorbs everything but the color red! The extra light is reflected and actually lost to the environment. Thus, it doesn’t contribute to the heating process.

So you theoretically can cook food using visible light; however, you would need so much of this light coming from all directions to be adequately absorbed sufficiently enough by the object to raise its temperature enough to eat. The visible spectrum of light is not really for heating, it’s for seeing–infrared is for feeling as heat, not for seeing!

If you take a look at the following chart of electromagnetic radiation you will see that the microwave spectrum is just to the right of the infrared light spectrum. Infrared has a wavelength of 750 nm – 1 mm and microwaves have a wavelength of 1 mm – 1 m.

Microwaves are very similar to infrared waves, however they are just longer in wavelength–which makes a huge difference in how your body reacts to these rays of light/radiation. We’ll get into how your body absorbs infrared vs. microwaves in a bit. But first, let’s look at how microwaves work.

Microwave ovens channel heat energy (rays of microwave light) directly to the molecules (tiny particles) inside food. In this sense, a microwave heats food very similar to how the sun and an infrared sauna heats your body.

Microwave ovens actually point microwave rays at the food and that food’s molecules charge (with thermal motion) causing the entire object to rise in temperature. So a microwave is like a little ‘food sauna’ if you would. However, the difference between an infrared sauna and a microwave is the length of the wave of light being used and how our bodies absorb that light.

Microwaves are only really dangerous because they penetrate your skin and deposit energy into a deeper layer that might not have good circulation and thus could overheat too quickly. For example, microwave energy is dangerous for your eyes because microwaves will heat your cells much faster than sunlight or infrared. So by your eyes absorbing microwave energy too quickly they will overheat before you can even feel them get warm.

Infrared waves are much more gentle than microwave light. Additionally, your body is finely tuned to absorb the infrared energy from the sun as heat. It’s not tuned to absorb microwave energy as heat.

This is why infrared energy is used in the sauna environment and microwaves are used for food. Microwaves are much more efficient for food in terms of speed and infrared is much better for a sauna in terms of safety and health. So to officially answer the question, no, you are not microwaving yourself in an infrared sauna–although similar things are happening!

During yesterday’s blog post about why our bodies can feel infrared light but not UV rays there was a portion of the discussion talking about whether LED light photons give off heat. I thought that it would be interesting to write about how light particles give off heat or are the photons themselves what give off the heat?

Answer: I guess another way to describe this questions is by saying do you mean why does your body heat up when the sun shines? Or, why does your body heat up in an infrared sauna?

The sun emits photons, and photons carry all kinds of energy. When these energized photons come in contact with your skin, they’re either absorbed, transmitted or reflected. Which of these three processes happens will depend on the wavelength of the light particle (or photon), the angle of entry and the material the photon hits.

If the particle/photon is absorbed by your body, its energy has to go somewhere to be conserved. Therefore, the energy of the photon may be converted to heat inside of your body. Infrared light is a longer wavelength which is at the perfect wavelength to activate, energize and charge (through molecular motion) your body’s molecules of your cells which then raise their temperature on the whole. This is why an infrared sauna raises your core body temperature–all of your cells are absorbing the infrared energy.

Photons of any part of the light spectrum can heat up an object; however most of the objects on earth emit black body radiation (or put out infrared light themselves) in the infrared spectrum. This is the reason why we can see warm bodies with infrared cameras or why we can use infrared night vision–things on Earth emit infrared light as heat!

I frequently get asked a question if an infrared sauna is going to tan a user’s skin like a tanning bed. More specifically, does an infrared sauna produce UV rays that will burn your skin?

Question: Why can we feel infrared light but not ultraviolet rays?

Answer: Do you mean why can you feel infrared light as radiant heat and ultraviolet doesn’t have an ‘immediate’ effect of heat?

This question can be answered by saying that how your body feels the infrared light waves and UV rays as heat has everything to do with how different wavelengths are absorbed by the body. Infrared is a longer wavelength of light which happens to be at the “right” wavelength to activate your body’s vibrational modes in the molecules of your cells which then raise their temperature. The temperature of your cells rise because the overall temperature is just the average vibrational energy of an aggregate of molecules. This is why an infrared sauna raises your core body temperature on the whole.

Ultraviolet on the other hand is much shorter wavelength of light and doesn’t cause your body’s molecules to vibrate. You only feel it much later with a sunburn, which is the result of destructive excitation from UV radiation on your skin.

If you see the light chart above you’ll see that the wavelengths are shorter on the left and get longer on the right. Every other wavelength of light is not absorbed as heat in your cells; which is why infrared is used in saunas and is the type of heat that you feel from the sun! Your body is actually finely tuned to absorb just the right length of light to raise its core temperature. It’s infrared! Which you can’t see, but your body feels as heat. I hope this helps answer your question that you aren’t sitting in a tanning bed while taking an infrared sauna!